Siro invests €20m in Galway gigabit roll-out

Siro will use the existing ESB network to deliver broadband to 30,000 premises in Galway city.

This morning (15 July), Government Chief Whip and Minister of State for the Irish Language, the Gaeltacht and the Islands Seán Kyne, TD, officially launched a roll-out of Siro gigabit broadband in Galway city.

The roll-out began last week, when a number of homes in Oranmore were connected to the network. It will continue to eventually include 30,000 premises across Galway city and the surrounding area, thanks to a €20m investment by Siro. This will be the largest single investment that the wholesale broadband operator will make in 2019.

The network build will commence from Siro points of interconnect in Galway, Oranmore and Moneenageisha to cover 30 clusters in the Galway area.

Using the existing ESB network, Siro has built dedicated fibre optic cables all the way to the home or business premises in order to deliver speeds of one gigabit per second, 15 times faster than the average broadband speeds in Ireland according to an Ookla speed test, which noted the average broadband speed in Ireland as 70Mbps.

Fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) technology is now the fastest-growing segment of the Irish broadband market with connections more than doubling since the start of 2018, from 50,000 to 108,000, according to ComReg.

Kyne said that the investment in Galway by ESB and Vodafone through Siro is a direct result of the Government’s policies on broadband, which have included enabling the use of the ESB network for telecommunications.

Driven by data

The TLI Group was appointed build delivery partner for the Galway roll-out. This consultancy and contracting company helped deliver Siro’s gigabit broadband to Carrigaline, Limerick, Tralee and Killarney, and is currently working in another six towns across Cork and Tipperary.

Galway Chamber president Dave Hickey said: “Given the strong growth of sectors such as financial services, medtech, ICT and cybersecurity in Galway, it is absolutely essential that business is supported by the best-quality connectivity. We have low-latency transatlantic connection and now we have the local connectivity to match. It builds further resilience for an economy increasingly driven by data.”

Mayor of Galway city, Cllr Mike Cubbard, also welcomed the news: “Galway city is well placed to leverage this with new office space due to come on stream over the next year, rental prices half the price of equivalent space in Dublin on average, a lower cost of living, and a talented workforce with 53pc of the city’s population under 35 years of age.”

Galway city joins a list of 45 locations connected to the Siro network across Ireland, including Swords, Dundalk, Finglas, Mallow, Letterkenny, Limerick and Cork city.